EDITOR’S NOTE: Ken Smith is a great guy, and i consider him to be a solid friend. Here he tackles the issue of how EXPERIENCE helps to make a real estate agent the greatest.

Could any agent be “The Greatest Real Estate Agent in the World“? While there are many great agents I seriously doubt any of them could with a straight face try to claim to be the “greatest in the world”. The main reason is every great agent knows at some point in time they make mistakes.

While making mistakes is part of life the important thing is what we learn from those mistakes. This is why an experienced real estate agent will be more likely to be the best choice for a buyer or seller.

For those that don’t know getting your real estate license amounts to taking some classes and learning about real estate law. Things that have nothing to do with selling real estate like what year the fair housing act was passed. While a very important bill, the year it passed doesn’t effect real estate sales today. The only thing that matter is what the law says and the spirit of the law. There are hundreds of worthless facts you quickly “learn” and just as quickly forget to be able to receive your real estate license that have nothing to do with being a great agent.

After receiving their license the real estate agent then needs to find a broker, which sadly is even easier then getting the license. When brand new every broker I interviewed with offered me a position. They even offered me small perks to get me to sign up with them. Disappointing, but true, very few had anything remotely close to an organized way of training their new agents.

The school of hard knocks really is how most agents learn about this business. A mistake must be made with one client to learn never to make the same mistake again. Agents have to learn after multiple mistakes how to best serve their clients and to learn what is best for one client may not be best for the next.

While experience is very important the agents ability learn and adapt based on their past experiences is even more important. Some lessons in life are very easy to learn, for example how many times did you have to touch a hot stove to learn not to? Most people only make that mistake once because the action has a clear (and painful) result. Unfortunately most actions that real estate agents make don’t have clearly defined results.

When a deal falls apart it is very hard to pinpoint what action caused this to happen. When a buyer ends up with “buyers remorse” or unhappy with an agents service how can they pinpoint the exact action that caused this result. A seller that feels their agent isn’t working hard enough for them or in the end decides that it’s the agent fault the home didn’t sell, what action caused this?

Without clearly defined results from individual actions how is an agent to figure out what went wrong? The agent must have systems in place and be willing to track everything. The agent must also be willing to take a hard look at their own performance when something goes wrong, not place blame on others, and find the flaw in the system. Once the flaw is identified the real estate agent must adapt their systems to make sure no future client has the same bad experience.

So in the end if there ever was to be a “Greatest Real Estate Agent in the World” they would be experienced, adaptable, flexible, systematized, and willing to accept responsibility for any and all problems that arise during a transaction.